Agenda item

To receive the report of the Strategic Director for Corporate Resources.

The Strategic Director for Corporate Resources presented the report making the following points:

·         there was commitment to improving governance across the council;

·         four action plans had been created for the areas reviewed by SWAP this year,

·         two areas had been put forward by officers following their concerns and requested SWAP review these;

·         the occupational health review had been commissioned by the Strategic Director People and Communities and a range of recommendations were made by SWAP and subsequently included in the HR improvement plan and would be delivered as soon as possible;

·         in CIL/s106 significant work had begun to address issues with an officer panel looking at governance across the area, including existing commitments;

·         Council tax arrears had seen simple improvements made, despite a shared service not having been implemented and a restructure was expected within the next couple of months;

·         some findings were frustrating regarding write-offs having been applied before authorisation and this practice had been stopped; and

·         sundry debtors had seen increasing debt which was not necessarily unusual in post-COVID times. This work had been moved from the Revenue and Benefits team back into the Finance team and resources increased from 0.8FTE previously to a team of four. Resources within legal had been reinstated to support recovery, having been lost some years ago in a previous savings exercise. A Collection Manager and 2 Collection Officer posts had been filled and would be starting imminently and were aware of their work plan.

The Strategic Directors for Corporate Governance and Place responded to questions from Members in the following terms:

·         the occupational health action plan would form part of the work of the new Head of HR including undertaking a review of whether the current provider was fit for purpose;

·         this was the second audit undertaken for CIL and the actions found previously had been undertaken and implemented.

·         there was a further linked audit regarding s106 and officers would like to bring before together;

·         CIL process was being followed and there had been improvements since the previous audit including the formation of a CIL task group who now had almost full use of the system with the ability to monitor CIL;

·         all CIL decision-making had been made in the proper way by the Executive;

·         a governance framework was being designed which would look at part, present and future expenditure in an open and transparent way;

·         the suggestion to register how outside agencies were spending the money would be incorporated into the process;

·         there was no new finance system in place yet as there had been challenges with the supplier;

·         there had been a new system introduced for part of sundry debt, housing benefit overpayments but the DWP required a lot more information and reporting, but this was working well;

·         a write-off assessment was made each year which included a bad debt provision, a conservative approach was taken;

·         in respect of material debts an individual view would be taken of recovery and there would be additional income if recovery were made;

·         this was an important area of work which the finance team had a lot of experience in managing;

·         there were several services where there was a significant amount of debt and those would be targeted;

·         sundry debt was increasing slightly but there had been high debt for several years, so this had not been a sudden rise;

·         Housing benefit overpayment could be anything from a few pounds to thousands, but this was underpinned by £1 million debt which would be paid off in line with statutory payments each month;

·         this would always be significant due to legislation;

·         commercial property debt was being addressed by the new officer in post;

·         financial regulations would be fully reviewed as part of the constitution review and would come before Members for consideration;

·         a range of Portfolio Holders would be responsible for determining write-offs; and

·         all write-offs were reported in the Outturn report.

The Chair moved the recommendation that the Audit and Governance Committee note the content of the audit reports contained at Appendix A and the actions that would be taken in response to the recommendations, which were seconded by Councillor Begley, voted upon, and CARRIED unanimously.